Tag: history

Categories
Review

“Humankind: A Hopeful History”

Rutger Bregman

This feels like the antidote to having too much of the news in your life. It is, throughout, mostly just cheerful.

It somewhat feels like the author’s journal while they were writing another book on the topic; I seldom think of “history” as a genre told in first person, but this contains a lot of that. In many places, the ‘history’ feels more like “the history of how the author learned these facts” than it is the proper history of said facts. But, for the most part, that works—it’s how Bregman goes through the repeated structure of “here’s this bad thing we all know about… but it turns out…”

I liked what was roughly the middle of the book the most; he goes through some of the well-known psychology experiments/phenomena. You know the ones—the Stanford Prison Experiment, Milgram’s “just following orders” experiment, and Kitty Genovese’s murder. And for all three, he absolutely tears apart the common knowledge version of events, points out the massive flaws in the experimental methodology, tells the much-less-“newsworthy” version of the story. Aside from the psychology, having that same treatment applied to Easter Island was also quite enjoyable.

The book is, overall, hopeful. I very much enjoyed it, and heartily recommend it; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“The Power of Scenery”

Dennis Drabelle

If I was shelving this, I’d have a tough time deciding between “literature” and “history” as the genre. It went back and forth; some sections felt like pretty straight history, while others sent me back to freshman year of college, reading Walden and Thoreau for a class on “writing the Western landscape.”

Whichever genre this falls into, though, I did enjoy the read. For all that I love the national parks system, I didn’t know much about the history, and this book really told that story well.

A very enjoyable read; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Prisoners of Geography”

Tim Marshall

I went in expecting this book to be mostly history, through the lens of geography; it proved me wrong, right off the bat, by talking about as-of-its-publishing current affairs in Russia, and why Russia was doing what it was doing. Later chapters did devote more time to history, but overall, this was more of a political science book, with a little bit of history, through the lens of geography. I suppose the foreword having been written by a former head of MI6 was a hint about what sort of book it was going to be.

None of that is to say it was a bad book, just not remotely what I expected. Maybe not the best in ebook form, although to really get the benefit of the maps I think it’d be better to be sat down with both this book and a proper, full-sized atlas, rather than relying on the insets at the beginning of each chapter.

An interesting book; check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Atomic Frontier Days”

John M. Findlay & Bruce W. Hevly

At some point I may have to run through the database here and figure out what percent of reviews tagged “history” are also tagged “nuclear”. And then how many have the much more specific tag “Hanford Site”. I’ve got an area of interest, you see; considering how nearby it is, one of these days I really ought to make a trip out there, and have a photography post join that collection.1

This was a fun one, which I stumbled across entirely by accident—I was looking for a copy of Atomic Days and instead came up with Atomic Frontier Days. Which was, in point of fact, about the same thing—the history of the Hanford Site. Having not yet read Atomic Days, I can’t do the direct comparison, but reviewing the cover blurb thereof, I suspect that the distinction will be something Atomic Frontier Days was leaning hard into: it’s not just about the “woo, look at how awful Hanford was, look at all the ways it polluted the area and was terrible to the people who lived there!”

And, sure, that’s present, but this also had a lot more discussion of the other side of the story. People were proud to work at Hanford; they were contributing to national defense, they were on the cutting edge of technology, they were pioneers in a way that wasn’t really a thing anymore.

Past that, there were people looking at the ‘company town’ nature of the tri-cities, and trying to avoid the problems that always face company towns. What happens when the company goes out of business? What happens when the Cold War ends and we no longer “need” to keep manufacturing nuclear weapons? Even if the plan is just “last one out the door, turn off the lights”… moving to a more established city isn’t cheap, and it’s pretty hard to get a good sale price on your home when everyone is moving away. So, instead, the folks who liked living there said: how do we diversify our economy? What else can we do here that isn’t just “work at Hanford”?

It’s an interesting perspective, and one I haven’t thought much about before. Honestly, the final chapter kinda sold me on going out there for the sort of tourism I’d usually do over in eastern Oregon; I love the Columbia Gorge, so why not go see some more of it and also poke my nose around a historical area of interest?

That said, the one flaw I felt in this book was that it felt like it ended at about 2000. Given that it was published in 2011, it does feel like there could’ve been a bit more mention of the aughts, at least. Even just some notes in the epilogue would’ve been nice.

Still, I enjoyed the read; if you want to join me in being a big ol’ Hanford nerd, check it out.2

  1. Well, it wouldn’t be tagged ‘review,’ within the way I use that tag. I’m not much of a location-reviewer. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Persians”

Lloyd Llewellyn-Jones

I continue my slow procession eastward in my reading of history!

The core concept of this book was, really, “hey, you: most of what you know about Persia was written by the Greeks, who were writing it as anti-Persian propaganda. Let’s talk about the Persian Version of history.” And, for the most part, it sticks with that — there’s a few places where what’s available gets a bit thin, as the Persian Empire didn’t really do written records of history, they went in for the oral tradition, which… doesn’t survive well, after that many centuries. Whereas the Greeks sure liked writing down their stories, and hey presto, we’ve been basing our entire shared background knowledge of an ancient culture on… someone using them as a definitive Other around which to construct a shared identity. Not great, Bob!

As per usual with my reading of history, I don’t really expect to retain a whole lot of detail, I’m just trying to fill in enough that I’ll have some vague knowledge to get me started if I want to dive deep again later. As such, the middle section, where the author pauses the actual “and so-and-so did such-and-such thing” history bits and instead devotes a fair chunk of time to just talking about how the Persian Empire worked, how people lived, was my favorite. That’s what I wanted from the history book! I wanted to know what my fellow, like, mid-level bureaucrats were doing; that’s the lifestyle I occupy now, and it’s the one that’ll be the most directly comparable for me mentally then.

Overall, a good read; occasionally in danger of getting a bit too dry, but Llewellyn-Jones managed to balance that out with the occasional flash of that characteristically British dry humor, which somehow cancels out any dryness in prose. Check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Chip War”

Chris Miller

I wound up with pages and pages of notes to discuss this book during the actual book club session, but I think I’m going to keep this review short — in no small part because I’m tagging it geopolitics, and as I’m writing this in February of 2025 to be posted roughly a year later, anything I have to say about that is likely to have aged.

The history components were interesting; I knew the very broad strokes of the foundation of Silicon Valley, but I’m so used to the current “it’s all manufactured in Asia” state of affairs that I’d honestly lost track of the fact that it’s Silicon Valley because they manufactured silicon chips there originally. My other “no duh” moment was the realization that of course TSMC was founded with massive support from the Taiwanese government. It’s in the name, Grey. Keep up.

Other than those bits, the thing that most stuck with me was the actual technology of lithography, and exactly how ridiculous it has gotten. It’s extreme-ultraviolet lithography because the light waves in the visual spectrum were bigger than the transistors they need to print. The mirrors are so smooth that, if you scaled them up to the size of Germany, their largest imperfections would be a millimeter or so—and the targeting systems built for those mirrors are so precise that they could target a golf ball on the moon. And, lastly, the cooling fans for the lasers need to spin so fast that ball bearings were too much friction, so they are maglev fans. No wonder those EUV machines cost half a billion dollars each.

Overall: an interesting read, though already feeling a bit dated; by the time you’re reading this, it’ll probably be a bit more dated, but the background remains useful. Worth a read.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Emperor of Rome”

Mary Beard

My expectation here was definitely set by John Julius Norwitch’s style, where he kinda just started at the beginning and went in chronological order. Which is… an approach to talking about history. Probably the most traditional one, really.

This, however, was more willing to bounce around. There was certainly some amount of following chronology, but the chapters were each grouped by theme rather than, say, emperor. “The Emperor Abroad,” to discuss the various travels about the empire that they dead; “Face to Face” for an absolutely fascinating discussion of the art of the emperor, and the degree to which everything we have these days is the result of ancient PR campaigns.1 In general, the book isn’t about an emperor, or even a succession thereof, but about the emperor; the concept of the emperor, the office of the emperor. The continuity of imperial power.

It’s an interesting approach, and one that made the book more enjoyable to read. I’m never going to be able to keep track of the years in which things happened, the order of the emperors, any of that. But I’m going to remember that dinner parties were an effective way to express soft power, that imperial edicts were more performative than actually implemented, that politics has been politics for thousands of years. Human nature doesn’t change that much, really.

A great read overall, and an interesting approach to the broad cultural background that is the Roman Empire. Totally worth the read; check it out.2

  1. Also, some mind-blowing discussion of the amount of unofficial merch that there was for the emperor; ‘the ancient equivalent of refrigerator magnets,’ locally-made stuff that made the emperor, a distant figure even for those living in Rome itself, very clearly match the same vibe we have for the British royal family, or just random celebrities, now. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Give Her Credit”

Grace L. Williams

I’m really on a kick of “books about people building something” of late! And this one gets bonus points for being nonfiction, so the thing that got built really got built, which is even more fun.

“Give Her Credit” is a well-chosen title for a book about the opening of Women’s Bank in Denver, and the women who built it. It’s a cool piece of history, and touched on something I’d never really thought about: people, like, create banks. They aren’t all horrendously gigantic corporations that have existed since the 1800s! And, unsurprisingly for the banking industry, it’s a whole process to do.

I actually made it through this book in, basically, one sitting.1 It was pretty approachable! I was worried about how much sexism I was going to have to make my way through, because, again, this is a book about women opening a bank for women. In the 1970s. And the decades leading up to the 1970s. And boy, was there ever a lot of crap they were forced to go through, but the way the story was told managed to keep it from feeling overwhelming.

All in all, a good read about an interesting little corner of history. Worth a read; check it out.2

  1. Well, I moved from the couch to the counter so that I could eat dinner while reading, but other than that… ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Unruly”

David Mitchell

From right at the beginning of the first chapter:

England was a word that gradually gained currency, like mansplain or staycation, and it was fully in use by the time William the Conquerer was king of it. I expect you’ve heard of him. Most people know that, in 1606, William the Conquerer (not at that point so named) won the Battle of Hastings and became king of England. When it comes to the likely readership of this book, that ‘most’ must rise to ‘all’. If there is anyone reading this book who didn’t already know that, I would love to hear from you because you are genuinely reading in a genre that was previously of no interest. You, if you exist, and I bet you don’t, are an absolute confounder of the algorithms.It would be like someone reading a biography of Elvis Presley who did not already know that he was a singer. What you are doing is probably more statistically remarkable than what William the Conquerer did. (14)

I have exciting news for the author about the level of knowledge I had about British history coming in to this book! To whit, none; I grabbed it specifically because I don’t know anything about the topic and have been wanting to learn more.

This feels very approachable and very British; it’s like Cunk on Britain in written form, and taking itself marginally more seriously. Also, notably uncensored, as the chapter on Cnut covered.1 I will admit, here at the end of the book, that I don’t know that I’ve retained much detail, but I wasn’t really expecting to — the point of reading this was that I knew nothing about British history, and wanted to have at least some broad-strokes vague ideas, not that I was trying to make a career pivot into ‘historian.’ So I think that’s alright. And I wouldn’t be a great historian, particularly British historian, as my level of attention to details like “which number Elizabeth was that” is such that I was very surprised that the book ended after Elizabeth I. It says, right on the cover, “A tale of power, glory, and gore from Arthur to Elizabeth I,” and I was still expecting it to carry on all the way up to the death of Elizabeth II. Whoops.

Anyhow, for the goal of “a broad overview and an entertaining read,” this absolutely delivered. If you’re interested, give it a go.2

  1. If you can’t guess what sorts of jokes were made throughout, I don’t know how to be more clear. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Images of Rail: Portland’s Streetcar Lines”

Richard Thompson

This was a fun little thing to flip through. I actually didn’t realize when I grabbed it at the book store (Powell’s, if I can be a little more Portland) that it was a photo book – the “Images of Rail” bit in the title is in a much smaller print than the “Portland’s Streetcar Lines” bit. Several thoughts I had on the way through:

  1. I live by one of the new streetcar lines, and quite appreciate it, but the new streetcars don’t have the same aesthetic appeal as the old ones.
  2. I never knew about the origin of the Montavilla neighborhood’s name: Mount Tabor Villa, which was shortened (per the book, on the streetcar signs) first to “Mt. Ta. Villa” and then “Monta.Villa”
  3. Lastly, page 73 features the schedule, from 1891, for the Portland-Vancouver streetcar line. It is infuriating.1

So many of the photos mention being in areas that I think of as very built-up, but in the backgrounds there’s… nothing. A single building, maybe. It was fascinating to see the amount of change that’s happened in the century and a half. And, aside from my little transportation-policy rant that accounts for about half of this book review, I quite enjoyed it. Check it out.2

  1. There were departures from Portland every 20 minutes from 6:00 AM to 7:00 PM, at which point it dropped to every 30 minutes until midnight. Leaving Vancouver, on the other hand, required a bit more planning—departures were every 40 minutes from 6:45 AM to 11:15 PM. Seven days a week, though on Sunday mornings they didn’t start until 7:40 AM.
    That’s a pretty robust amount of service, especially considering that as of the 1890 census, Portland’s population came in at just over 46,000, whereas Vancouver had had a massive amount of growth since 1880, and now boasted 3,500 residents!
    Compare that to the current populations – Portland at 630,000 or so, and Vancouver at 190,000. With that sort of population growth, surely the public transit options between the cities have gotten even better! Let me just check my notes here…
    Ah. There’s no rail infrastructure at all. The interstate bridge replacement program is going to extend the light-rail network over the river any time now—as of this writing, they’re only a couple years behind schedule and a couple billion dollars over budget, having… yet to establish a “start of construction” date.
    That’s fine, maybe the busses are better?
    Ah. “Busses” was the wrong word; it seems I meant “bus”. On weekdays, you can catch a bus, once every 40 minutes, to get between the downtown cores of these two neighboring cities. And on the weekends, you can… walk, I guess?
    Thanks, America. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“A People’s History of the United States”

Howard Zinn

This was one of those books that took me a long time to get through; 650 pages of small print, dense with names and dates, it’s basically my precise weakness in reading. It is also—and, in reading it over the course of several weeks, I assure you I have had time to think about this—one of the most important books I’ve ever read.1 I’ll let Zinn speak for himself in what purpose the book actually serves:

As for the subtitle of this book, it is not quite accurate; a “people’s history” promises more than any one person can fulfill, and it is the most difficult kind of history to recapture. I call it that anyway because, with all its limitations, it is a history disrespectful of governments and respectful of people’s movements of resistance.

That makes it a biased account, one that leans in a certain direction. I am not troubled by that, because the mountain of history books under which we all stand leans so heavily in the other direction—so tremblingly respectful of states and statesmen and so disrespectful, by inattention, to people’s movements—that we need some counterforce to avoid being crushed into submission. (631)2

This is the counterpart to my “I went to public schools in the USA” education.3 This is the book that points out the things I never think about, because we’re gently guided away from thinking about them.4

It is also, setting aside the aforementioned name-and-date density, very well written. Some choice quotes, where I just truly appreciated the writing style:

In premodern times, the maldistribution of wealth was accomplished by simple force. In modern times, exploitation is disguised—it is accomplished by law, which has the look of neutrality and fairness. By the time of the Civil War, modernization was well under way in the United States. (240)

… one could call that a zinn-ger.5

It had long been true, and prisoners knew this better than anyone, that the poorer you were the more likely you were to end up in jail. This was not just because the poor committed more crimes. In fact, they did. The rich did not have to commit crimes to get what they wanted; the laws were on their side. (516)

And one more quote that I enjoyed enough to copy down:

Vietnam was “lost” (the very word supposed it was ours to lose). (551)

The chapter that felt like the original end to the book, prior to it being updated for the Clinton and Bush administrations, had a little bit of a call-to-action feel to it, but given when it was written, it mostly just made me think oh, this is a really useful way to look at the elections that’ve happened in my adult life.

Capitalism has always been a failure for the lower classes. It is now beginning to fail for the middle classes. (637)

I enjoyed the hell out of this book. I wish I could get my hands on a version that covered up until now, but alas, old historians never die… they just become primary sources. Still, despite being over 20 years old, the only part of it that actually felt dated to me was how little reference to the LGBTQ rights movement there was.6 Absolutely worth the read; check it out.7

  1. It’s also one of the first times in quite a while that I’ve used Ulysses’ little ‘notes’ sidebar to store a set of quotes to maybe insert into my writing, so: brace yourself. ↩
  2. I’m quoting from the 2003 “Perennial Classics” edition; given how many different versions of the book I saw when I picked it up at Powell’s, that may still not be enough to narrow down exactly which version it is, but hopefully the page numbers will at least get you close. The afterword in this edition ended on page 688. ↩
  3. I’m not quite paraphrasing Zinn, but I got close:
    > For the United States to step forward as a defender of helpless countries matched its image in American high school history textbooks, but not its record in world affairs. (408) ↩
  4. For example: it’s a little weird that we talk up how close any given presidential election is when, to use 2016 as an example, of the eligible voters in the US, Donald Trump got 25.6% of the vote, and Hillary got 26.8%. ↩
  5. Given how mad at me autocorrect got about trying to type that pun, one probably shouldn’t. ↩
  6. Roughly two paragraphs, all told; one mention of the earlier parts of it, and several chapters later, an admission that it should’ve been covered more. Yep! It should’ve! ↩
  7. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“Paved Paradise”

Henry Grabar

Be still, my urbanist heart.

I loved this book. Being me, I probably still would’ve enjoyed it even if it was textbook-dry, dully reciting the history of parking policy in the United States, breaking for the occasional multi-page table of data. But that’s not what this book was. This was a wonderfully well-written piece, going through the surprisingly entertaining history of parking policy and arriving at the current state of affairs. (In retrospect, it should’ve been obvious that parking lots were ripe for corruption — in the same way that the number of gym memberships sold has very little correlation with the occupancy of the gym, nobody knows the actual occupancy rate of a parking lot, so if it’s operating on cash… who’s to know that you pocketed half the day’s receipts?)

I’d actually listened to two different podcast episodes about this book before picking it up to read, so I was already filled in on the key points, but I don’t think the book lost anything for that. It was the details that really captivated me—little mentions of things like “UPS got a $6 million discount on their New York City parking tickets by agreeing to pay them in bulk instead of individually disputing each one,” which by the omission really emphasizes exactly how many parking citations UPS picks up in NYC in a given year.

And I actually came out of this one feeling particularly optimistic. Not only do I live in one of the places that’s making a fair amount of the right sorts of moves to undo all that historic damage, but I’m also at the right time. We just came out of the pandemic, and boy was that ever a time for people to learn that… we can be doing better things with all that space? Outdoor seating at restaurants is great! Pedestrianized streets are awesome!

So hey, go read this one, it was super interesting. Absolutely worth the read.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“The Big Roads”

Earl Swift

I have, of late, fallen down something of an urbanism and transit policy rabbit hole. Although, I suppose calling it “of late” isn’t all that accurate, it’s apparently been the last couple years. Regardless, I have a certain set of existing thoughts about the interstate highway system, and thus came into this book with a certain amount of skepticism. It felt poised to be a glorification of the “open road,” a paean to the greatest infrastructure project ever undertaken.

And, for a while, it was, but just as the public feeling on highway construction changed at a certain point, so too did the book’s. We were no longer following the early motorists and their obsession, and instead delving into the fight against the freeways. Suddenly, we were seeing some of the same arguments that urbanists are still making today:

In retrospect, the survey’s were self-fulfilling—their yardsticks were motorist safety, travel time, gasoline use, and incidence of repair, all facets of the driving experience. The effects on those not using the roads were neither as easily tallied nor as eagerly sought.

The final part of the book felt very “bittersweet Americana” to me; we saw the retirements, fading into obscurity, and obituaries of the men1 who built the interstate highways. And at the same time, we saw the dream fading into the reality we got, culminating in this description that felt truly, deeply tired:

Interchanges have more in common with each other than any one of them has with wherever it happens to be. The twain have met; exit a California interstate, and you’ll find what you left in Connecticut—and very little that you didn’t leave in Connecticut. The interstates take a distillation of the broad American culture—a one-size-fits-all, lowest-common-denominator reading of who we are and what we want—wherever they go.

All in all, I found this a fascinating history. How many people know that the interstate highway system is properly titled “The Dwight D. Eisenhower National System of Interstate and Defense Highways”—much less that he really had no idea what he was signing, and his design for the highway system had approximately nothing to do with what was in the bill, much less what was built? I knew the first part, but thought he’d actually been, at least in part, the architect of the thing. I bought the story that the system was created based on his experience of the Autobahn during the war, and of a horrible cross-country “road” trip prior to it, not that it was an existing plan written up a decade before by engineers. Seriously, there’s plenty of new information in here—and quite a few wild characters, because it starts back before the automobile was even around, and boy howdy were some of those early motorists bonkers. I would up enjoying the heck out of this book, and highly recommend it; check it out.2

  1. And yes, they were all men; the only women really making an appearance anywhere in this book were the wives. I thought the “secretary treated as right-hand woman” of The Chief was going to be an exception, but at some point they began an affair, and he apparently celebrated the loss of his job by asking her to marry him. ↩
  2. This is an Amazon affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I prefer Bookshop affiliate links to Amazon when possible, but in this case, the book wasn’t available there, so it’ll have to do. ↩
Categories
Review

“That Wild Country”

Mark Kenyon

I went in with the wrong expectations here—I was expecting a purely-history book, and so the opening chapters being entirely autobiographical about this guy’s experience of going on hikes felt very weird. Over the course of the book, though, I adjusted to it being a split of history and autobiography, and I think Kenyon did as well, striking a better balance by the end.

It was nice that the book had, in essence, a thesis throughout: our public lands are the thing that truly makes America great, and we should be defending them against the predations of… industry and development, basically. And, as a bonus, this is something that we can build a bipartisan coalition around: “Cabela’s and REI” both agree that these public lands should be preserved for public use, if for slightly different reasons. But that’s the beauty of a multiple-use land arrangement; all the outdoorsy folks can do their thing.

Overall, I found this book quite enjoyable, and heartily recommend it. Check it out.1

  1. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩
Categories
Review

“The Silk Roads”

Peter Frankopan

Just like my last book review, I’ve got two thoughts; apparently it’s always two things with me. This time, it was two things that I actually did learn about in history class that this book helped me understand better than the classes ever did.

First, the American Revolution. As the output of the American education system, I’m well aware that it, basically, got started because Britain raised taxes on the colonies in what would become the US, and we all got mad about it.1 What this book pointed out is why Britain increased taxes — because, of course, they had to know it wouldn’t be popular, so it wouldn’t have been just for funsies, there had to be a reason. The reason, it turns out, was that they had just bailed out the British East India Company, and big bailouts require funding. Why did they bail out the British East India Company? Because the BEIC’s revenues from India had suddenly collapsed! Why did those revenues suddenly collapse? To summarize, because the company realized that, thanks to the magic of colonialism, the could just… not pay a living wage! To anyone! And so they didn’t. And then millions of people starved. (To those following along at home, the moral of the story is that you should pay people a living wage. And also, y’know, not do coercive labor practices in any way, shape, or form.)

Secondly, and let’s just go ahead and say right now that it’s not gonna get lighter in tone, was World War II. I very specifically remember thinking, in not only high school but also college-level history classes, “how did Hitler think invading Russia was going to go well, it’s like the canonical way to end a European empire.” It was never really explained, the best I ever got was mumbling about his egomaniacal tendencies and the need for “Lebensraum.” Which, to be fair, were factors. But this book did a lot better a job explaining a key thing: crops. The goal wasn’t to invade Russia, it was to take Ukraine—the bread basket of the USSR. And the issue wasn’t egonomanicism or greed, it was that Germany didn’t have enough food. Also on the list of things that can cause massive starvation: declaring war on everyone, dumping your entire economy into war matériel, and conscripting every farm worker with a Y chromosome. Plants may generally be able to grow themselves, but they don’t harvest themselves.

The book had a whole lot of other interesting stuff. I knew (and, let’s be real, still know) very little about Asian history, so a whole heck of a lot of this was new to me. The bits above are what I called out because they were revelatory moments about things I already knew about. A different form of learning to “this is brand new information” types of things. I found the book quite approachable, and the chapters were broken up fairly well—not tiny chunks, each one is still gonna take some time to get through, but reasonable enough. The naming pattern definitely got stretched thin after a while, but that’s probably less of an issue if you’re reading a print copy instead of the ebook where the chapter title is always visible at the top of the screen.

All in all, a good read, and I recommend it, Check it out!2

  1. “No taxation without representation” does point out that the lack of representation was also a key issue, but it’s not as relevant to my realization here. ↩
  2. This is a Bookshop affiliate link – if you buy it from here, I get a little bit of commission. It won’t hurt my feelings if you buy it elsewhere; honestly, I’d rather you check it out from your local library, or go to a local book store. I use Bookshop affiliate links instead of Amazon because they distribute a significant chunk of their profits to small, local book stores. ↩